Israeli Basketball Premier League
top division of Israeli basketball
Ligat HaAl (Hebrew: ליגת העל, lit., Supreme League or Premier League), or the Israeli Basketball Premier League, is a professional basketball league in Israel and the highest level of basketball in the country. The league's name is abbreviated as either BSL (Basketball Super League) or ISBL (Israeli Basketball Super League). For sponsorship reasons, the league is also referred to as Ligat Winner Sal (Hebrew: ליגת ווינר סל), lit. Winner Basket League, with "Winner" being the name of a game operated by the league's primary sponsor, Toto Winner.
The league is run by the Israeli Basketball Super League Administration Ltd.
Overview
Ligat HaAl comprises the top 14 basketball clubs in Israel, and was founded in 1954.
The league itself is most known in Europe, due to the success of the Israeli teams in European-wide competitions, such as the EuroLeague, EuroCup (formerly called the ULEB Cup), and FIBA's EuroChallenge (formerly called the FIBA EuroCup). Many undrafted and free agent players from Europe and the NBA play in the Israeli league, as an alternative to NBA competition.
The league is the first division in Israeli basketball: the team that finishes last in a season is relegated to the Second Division, while the Second Division's top eight teams compete in a play-off system right after the end of the regular season, with the team that reaches the finals series being promoted to the Premier League for the following season.
Format
There are 14 teams in the league, and they play against each other three times a season.
The public source identifies “Israeli Basketball Premier League” as top division of Israeli basketball. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Israeli, Basketball and Premier.
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This entry incorporates text from “Israeli Basketball Premier League” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.